


Clearing the Soil of Stones

by the_rck



Series: Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion [9]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Babies, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Threats, Unreliable Narrator, emotional blackmail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 10:23:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16116446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Sometimes, Layla gave Warren his powers back and sent him off with one or both of the guys. Sometimes, Layla gave Warren his powers back and left him to reinforce Magenta in case anyone attacked.Warren kept his head down and tried very hard to give all four of them exactly what they wanted.He thought Layla was starting to accept that he really wanted to stay.He thought Ethan still worried about Warren changing his mind. If Ethan ever decided that Warren was a threat--Warren wasn’t actually sure what would happen except that it would be very, very bad and that none of the others-- except possibly Magenta-- would ever know that Ethan had done it. Warren also wasn’t sure if Ethan realized that Warren saw the danger.





	Clearing the Soil of Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Cheryl Dumesnil's "Prayer for Beginning."
> 
> This takes place about a year after "You Cannot Fold a Flood" and "Locked with a Twisted Key." There's no explicit sex or violence, but there are references to both.
> 
> So, somehow, this all comes around to the idea that the happiest outcome is lots and lots of therapy. I'm not sure everyone will choose it, but...
> 
> An annotated index to this series can be found on my writing DW account: https://somethingdarker.dreamwidth.org/65198.html
> 
> I have posted some notes about characterization and process on my writing DW journal: https://somethingdarker.dreamwidth.org/67622.html

**2018**

A year on, Layla, Zach, and Ethan spent a lot of time off of Sky High. Ethan’s parents and Zach’s were doing most of the teaching. It kept them busy and wasn’t anything like the same as helping anyone conquer the world. 

Whatever else they might say, none of the parents ever blamed the Homecoming kids, but the kids picked up on the tensions and disagreements anyway. Magenta trying to explain the historic super culture and laws to adolescents ought to have been funny.

It wasn’t. It really wasn’t, and she clashed with the parents on other instructional topics, too.

Sometimes, Layla gave Warren his powers back and sent him off with one or both of the guys. Sometimes, Layla gave Warren his powers back and left him to reinforce Magenta in case anyone attacked. 

Warren kept his head down and tried very hard to give all four of them exactly what they wanted.

He thought Layla was starting to accept that he really wanted to stay.

He thought Ethan still worried about Warren changing his mind. If Ethan ever decided that Warren was a threat-- 

Warren wasn’t actually sure what would happen except that it would be very, very bad and that none of the others-- except possibly Magenta-- would ever know that Ethan had done it. Warren also wasn’t sure if Ethan realized that Warren saw the danger.

Right at the moment, Layla was traveling the world, trying to figure out proper patterns for rainfall. She could manipulate that, but it was still a more complicated thing than she could quite understand. In another three or four years, she’d dictate weather patterns all over the globe. That was less time than she’d needed to learn to alter human cells for specific purposes on the fly.

She said that weather was harder because other people would die if she screwed up. Lots of other people. It wasn’t that it was more complicated, not much anyway, just that it was bigger and harder to experiment with safely.

Zach was getting supplies, things for which he didn’t have a steady source now that Barron Battle’s influence and connections were gone.

Ethan was-- Actually, Ethan hadn’t said where he was going or what he was going to be doing. Warren was almost sure that Ethan hadn’t told any of the others, either; which was more surprising than him not telling Warren.

Warren sat in the rooms the five of them still shared. There was a bassinet in one corner, and he never quite got enough of looking at his son’s face. He didn’t get to hold the baby very often because the other four all had priority.

Magenta had decided to name the baby James after Layla’s father. Warren thought it was a good choice, but nobody’d asked his opinion.

James didn’t have a family name because Magenta didn’t like hers. “And I’m not saddling a kid with Battle,” she’d told Warren. “No fucking way. I didn’t hate your dad-- he was kind to me-- but he was an asshole. Better to let both Battle and Peace disappear.”

Warren hadn’t answered even though it looked like she might listen if she did. Little James was going to be better off without that sort of explicit connection to Warren’s family, but...

Warren’s father would have been thrilled to have a grandchild who wasn’t a de-aged former enemy.

Warren hadn’t actually loved his father, not the way he loved Maureen or the Homecoming kids or his former sidekicks, so he wasn’t sure why thinking about that hurt. He just didn’t let himself think about it a second time.

For the moment, all Warren wanted was a little space to be amazed. He didn’t love James more than the other kids-- he’d worried that he would-- but looking at James and looking at the older kids made him remember that they’d all-- every person on the planet-- been that small once. Even he had.

He wondered if Barron Battle had ever looked at him this way. He actually hoped not. Warren could look at a baby and then go out and do whatever he had to do. Nothing had forced Barron Battle to torture and murder; he’d simply done terrible shit because it was amusing. If he’d been able to perceive what Warren did and still had fun inflicting random violence--

Barron Battle had been kind of a psycho. He’d also been whole in a way that Warren envied.

“You can pick him up, you know.” Magenta’s voice was soft.

Warren hadn’t noticed her come in, so he started a little. Knowing that she couldn’t see his face from the doorway, he closed his eyes for a second. “I don’t want to wake him.” He stood and glanced at her. He didn’t think she was going to give him any orders, but she might. 

She could.

Any of them could, and he’d do his damnedest.

“There should be other kids his age,” Warren said. “On Sky High, I mean.” He was pretty sure that the others would think of it soon. None of them would have forgotten how wrong it had been for Maureen to be alone.

His former sidekicks were simply busy with other things. Warren had a lot of time now, too much time. Avoiding thinking about the wrong things had gotten a lot harder due to Zach’s… creative games.

“Soon,” Magenta said. “At six weeks he’s only just noticing _us_. We’ve got time.” She crossed the room to stand next to Warren and look down at their son. She put a hand on Warren’s arm.

If it had been one of the others-- or if one of the others had been there, too-- he’d probably have flinched. Instead, he returned her smile. “You know I’m not going to run, right?”

James turned his head and waved a fist. His eyes started to open.

“I know.” Magenta bent and lifted their baby. “You have a pretty firm grasp on what’s possible.”

Warren shrugged. “Even if I could--” He brushed a finger against James’ flailing hand. “Even then, not a single one of them would be better off if they went with me.” He couldn’t take the kids. Even if the others would let him go, they wouldn’t let him kidnap the kids, not even one.

“You’d be better off.” There was neither sympathy nor judgment in her voice.

He flinched. “I’d be alone.” He was also pretty sure that Zach would hunt him down and that what happened after would be… unpleasant.

“That,” Magenta said, “would not be our fault.” She closed her eyes and turned her back on him. “If I’d been able to do what Layla could, if she hadn’t needed me to agree about you, I’d have dumped your powerless ass groundside.”

He was pretty sure she wasn’t lying. “Magenta--”

She shook her head then turned back and handed him the baby. “Sit.”

James made a sound that Warren recognized as hunger about to produce tears.

“Shouldn’t I change him first?” Usually, the diaper came before the feeding.

“He’s not going to fall back asleep right away.”

Warren cradled James against his chest and sat. He supposed that Magenta knew more about James than he did.

“You don’t talk to him enough.”

Warren rocked back and forth in the chair in an effort to keep James from starting to fuss before Magenta prepared a bottle. “No one else wants me to,” he said softly. He gave the baby one of his knuckles to suck.

Magenta made a sound that might have been absent-minded agreement.

Might have been. If Warren hadn’t figured out, years ago, that she never stopped tracking potential threats.

He wasn’t ever going to tell her that he wasn’t a threat. He was. He could be. He just wasn’t an immediate threat. 

Magenta was thinking about seventeen different possible futures, and Warren was pretty sure there were circumstances under which he might become a threat again.

He considered that as the baby started complaining about the fact that Warren’s finger wasn’t producing milk. When Magenta handed Warren a warm bottle, he looked up and met her eyes for a moment. “All of the things that might make me go that way,” he said, “are about the kids, and I don’t see any of you hurting them.” 

Magenta would understand that he was replying to the words she hadn’t said, would never say.

He focused his attention on feeding James, on the sounds the baby was making, on how his son’s eyes met his and seemed to be asking the profoundest questions about the universe. Warren didn’t want to watch Magenta understand the truth of what he’d just said. He started murmuring nursery rhymes just to have something he could say without thinking too hard, something that would make Warren’s voice part of James’ memories and sense of normality.

Ethan had made all of them learn nursery rhymes years ago.

Zach and Layla had known quite a few before that, but Magenta and Warren hadn’t learned anything they hadn’t seen on PBS. They’d both been a little astounded by how many books and CDs there were of nursery rhymes and nonsense songs. _Different_ nursery rhymes and nonsense songs.

“There’s nothing good enough down there to justify going,” Magenta said. “Not for you. Not for me.” She sighed. “It’s fucked up that things being like this up here is still better for you.”

Warren didn’t look up. “Zach got bored,” he told her softly.

Magenta snorted. “Zach started having trouble coming up with drugs that would work. He also realized that you’re a… finite asset.”

Warren knew she wasn’t wrong, but he was pretty sure Zach had gotten bored, too. Warren started talking nonsense to James again because it was too ugly a topic for such a precious moment.

Layla’d have tailored drugs for anything Zach wanted. Or taken Warren’s healing away so that his body couldn’t fight the drugs. Or--

Warren was simply lucky that Layla’d decided that she’d only do it if Zach asked. Warren thought he wasn’t supposed to realize that. 

Talking to James meant not saying-- having no opportunity to say-- anything bitter and foolish to Magenta, so Warren started in with “Three Blind Mice.”

Magenta’s not-quite-sympathy could evaporate in a microsecond. It hadn’t any time in the last year, but Warren knew it could. He was more afraid of that than he was of Ethan, Zach, or even Layla. Magenta was the foundation under all of them.

Magenta was right-- James stayed awake after the bottle, so Warren changed him then played “This Little Piggy” with James’ toes before moving to one of the futons where James could lie on his tummy and kick a bit.

“We’ll need a crib soon,” Magenta observed, “and a separate room for him.”

Warren nodded because it was entirely true.

“Will you…?” She hesitated then went on, “It’s made nights safer for you. Having James in the room, that is.”

Warren shrugged. Mostly, it had just shifted the times and places when the others played with him. He hadn’t considered that part a big change. “Layla got bored, too.”

“That’s not the way I would have bet.” Magenta sounded thoughtful.

“I only gamble when losing won’t make anything worse.” He glanced over his shoulder at Magenta. “Even if Layla was still--” His throat closed because he was pretty sure Layla would find time for him again. He shook his head. “I get off on it.” He shrugged when Magenta made a disbelieving sound. He made himself smile. “It’s terrifying, but--” He didn’t actually have words to explain. 

Magenta stared at him then shook her head. She didn’t say anything else until James was asleep again. At that point, she beckoned Warren out of the bedroom.

He went. He’d have preferred to stay and watch his son sleep, but that wasn’t an option on the table.

Magenta pulled out a chair at the table they used for private meals and board games and that sort of thing. “Sit,” she told him. She waved a hand to indicate that he could take his choice of chairs.

If all five of them had been there, he’d have sat next to her. Instead, he sat across from her and waited.

“You’ve changed,” she said. “Well, and you haven’t. If all the crazy goes, you’ll go with it, won’t you?”

He considered that. “Probably.” That had been the real thing that terrified him about Zach and the hallucinogens. Contradictions and ideas and understandings that he’d suppressed and shunted aside had leaked out and had even, occasionally, exploded. Every bit took a little of Warren’s sense of self with it.

He understood now that that was what he’d done to Zach, less brutally but much more thoroughly. Zach hadn’t had any defenses, so Warren had erased a lot of who Zach thought he was. Zach looked whole, but there was a hell of a lot of Warren painted over his thin spots.

Layla’d had just enough defenses to fracture. Warren had had twelve years because she’d had to glue herself back together, almost certainly more than once. She probably hadn’t liked how her psyche looked the first time or even the tenth.

He was pretty sure that she only liked it now because Magenta, Ethan, and Zach all thought she was beautiful. They’d have thought that no matter which version she’d unveiled, but Layla probably wasn’t letting herself look at that.

And she’d only settled for what she could manage now because the kids were old enough for their powers to be immanent. She wanted the world to be safe for them when they left the nest.

“I… still love all four of you.” Warren wasn’t sure Magenta would believe him.

“Yeah, I know.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “You shouldn’t. You never should have. It saved our asses more than once, but it’s probably the shittiest thing you ever did to us.”

“I don’t think it’s me loving you.” Warren had actually thought about that once Zach forced those bits of his psyche out of hiding. “I think it’s me having forced you to love me. You’re worth loving. Worthy of it and…” He looked at the table. “I’d be lying if I told you that it wasn’t a good thing for me. You loving me and me loving you. Both.”

“Up until recently.” Her words were dry enough that Warren thought they might both die of thirst.

He didn’t look up. “Yeah.” He lifted one shoulder and let it fall again. He thought about pointing out that the four of them were amazing together and that it never would have happened without him, but he was pretty sure that those words would break Magenta’s self-control.

Then she actually would beat the shit out of him. 

Because he’d be right and because him being right meant the best thing in her life coming from the worst. She already knew-- they all already knew-- but Warren actually saying it would break her.

Magenta didn’t have many potential fracture points. She’d collapsed most of them with the sort of pressure that makes limestone into marble. 

Only some of that pressure had come from Warren. He hadn’t understood how much he was putting on her, and he probably would have done it anyway, but she’d shifted herself just enough that the pressure went to the places that could bear it best.

“I don’t think you’re going to die,” Magenta said, “not unless we decide we want you to.”

“I won’t fight you.” He’d tried very hard not to, not even when he was terrified. “Not ever.” He might be lying because he still wanted very badly to live, and he suspected that he was going to want that more as time went on. He had a different understanding of possibilities now than he’d had at fifteen or even at twenty. If the only thing left was death or fighting them, Warren would probably fight.

Of course, if they were going to kill him, they wouldn’t let him know it was coming.

“That’s a very, very long time to live like this,” Magenta said. Her tone was almost gentle.

“Layla will let me age,” he told her.

Layla and the other three probably weren’t going to age. If Layla hadn’t cracked that problem yet, she pretty certainly would. Warren simply wasn’t convinced that she’d exert herself to keep him young.

“She might. She might also-- You’re probably prettier now than you will be at fifty or seventy or whatever. More stamina, too.”

Warren made himself look at Magenta’s face.

She was completely serious. “You’re still working us. All of us know it. You’re just working the worth-fucking side harder than the worth-loving side.” She shook her head almost imperceptibly. “With dedication to the kids as your last line of defense.”

He looked out the window at the bushes that grew just high enough that nobody on the ground outside could look in. “I’d back them against you if you were a threat to them.” He was almost sure he would. He was also almost sure that none of his former sidekicks wanted his priorities to be different. “Even when I don’t have powers, I could still sabotage you.” He didn’t think saying that gave anything away.

Magenta and the others had to have considered every way in which they could have made Sky High a hell, before, when they didn’t have any power to challenge Warren. They hadn’t tried, and he wouldn’t, now.

“Yeah.”

Neither of them said anything for almost a minute. Then, Warren heard Magenta’s chair scrape against the floor. He heard the fridge open and then a cupboard. Judging by the other sounds, she’d poured a couple of beers.

“Ethan’s interviewing some people,” Magenta said as she set a glass on the table in front of Warren. “He says you-- and, I suspect, we, but I’m not supposed to have noticed the we part-- need a shrink.” Her chair scraped the floor again as she sat. 

Warren’s mind went completely blank. He turned to look at her.

She shrugged and waved a hand at the beer.

He picked it up and drank.

“I don’t think the rest of us-- Well, nobody talking to us is going to change what we’re going to _do_. That doesn’t qualify us as the sanest people on the planet.” She didn’t seem bothered by that. “Maybe we need a confessor or some such shit, but the going forth and sinning no more part won’t-- can’t-- happen. You--” She pointed a finger at Warren. “You could actually do the work and get somewhere. Zach wasn’t wrong about the amount of shit you’ve got buried in your head or the way you contort your thoughts to keep things--” She waved a hand then shook her head.

Warren was under no illusions that this was an offer of help. This was an order. “I don’t think I’ll be happier,” he told her softly.

“That’s not the goal.” For a moment, her face went hard and blank. Then her expression softened a little. “You were a victim once, too, and the solution to something shitty is never going to be leaving someone else buried in it.”

He flinched because he hadn’t forgotten what she’d said in the ruins of the boys’ locker room. “That was--” He’d only been five years older then than the Homecoming kids were now. He licked his lips. “There’s a difference between them and me. They hadn’t done anything. Still haven’t.”

Some of the kids were obnoxious little shits, but they hadn’t _done_ anything. They were just being thirteen.

“Not forgetting that.” Magenta nodded acknowledgement. “Not likely to forget that. Nevertheless. When Ethan finds someone, you’re going to talk to them.” She bared her teeth at him. “James is going to have a better father than you did.”

For a moment, Warren couldn’t breathe. He coughed twice, trying to force his throat to open again. “That’s cruel,” he said at last.

“Is it? You’re capable of improving. If I didn’t think so--” Her jaw set, and she didn’t say anything further for several seconds. “Zach got his hands on the Pacifier. You do this, or you get to be James’ brother.”

Warren looked out the window again. He tried to pretend for a moment that Magenta hadn’t just given him an ultimatum. She wouldn’t just limit Warren’s time with James; she’d excise him completely from his son’s life.

“I can--” she said in a detached tone, “--make you go and sit in the room with the shrink. I can’t make you talk. I can’t make you try to change anything.” She sighed. “As long as you try, really try, I’ll be good with it. If this shrink is terrible, we’ll find another one. As many as it takes. Just tell me. It’s not like we’re geographically limited or short of cash.”

“I understand.” He bowed his head. He wasn’t sure he could choose to unravel himself for anyone but James.

Magenta knew that part. It wasn’t why she’d let him father her first child. Well, it wasn’t the only reason or even a particularly important reason, but she’d probably thought of it before she made the decision to let him spend time with James.

The things bound in Warren’s head were corrosive and voraciously hungry. Zach had made Warren face them without any armor or tools. Magenta, at least, wasn’t demanding that. She still occasionally offered him some compassion.

This wasn’t revenge or punishment. It was still going to hurt like hell, but it wasn’t that.

**Author's Note:**

> I suspect that the opinions that Zach and Ethan's parents have on the situation vary a lot more than Warren thinks they do. Five different people are not going to agree 100% on this sort of thing (and there might be six of them as Ethan's mother might or might not have partnered with someone by this time). Ethan's father and stepmother might be glad to have their six year old somewhere that isn't likely to be in the line of fire, and the changes in Ethan are less obviously bad than the changes in Zach.
> 
> I have two other branches of this AU that are still WIP. I've put them aside for now and hope to work on some other things in other fandoms.


End file.
